Empowering Learners of Spanish

Empowering Learners of Spanish

ELS is a collection of activities based on critical pedagogies that serves to introduce students to a range of concepts in sociolinguistics and critical inquiry into language ideologies. Some of the activities are written in both English and Spanish, and resources are also in both languages. Working in two languages will allow students to reproduce the linguistic practices of bilinguals. Heritage learners of Spanish should find these practices familiar, and students learning Spanish as a second language will benefit from the scaffolding of using some English.

Moreover, language development for both profiles of students can be enhanced with the techniques of intercomprehension, outlined in the “Guide to intercomprehension” in the resource section below.

Instructors can decide what language(s) students should use to participate and respond (Spanish, English, Spanglish), depending on their local context, student level, and course objectives.

This is an unordered list of activities; there is no implied sequencing.

ELS is an open educational resource (OER). Our Creative Commons license is displayed at the bottom of each page on the site. You can use, adapt, and repurpose our activities, as long as you include an attribution to the original authors and this site.

We depend on your support! If you use ELS activities in your class, please let us know cómo funcionó: take a quick survey.


Publications related to this project

Photo credit: Celestino Deleyto Alcalá, 2012.